My B8 Class

Some of the 同学 and 王老师 from B8 class

Does time fly? It's been nearly five months since I've been back to
BLCU. The final exams are coming up in a couple of weeks….and I've
just realised I haven't written about my class yet in this blog.

So, I am in B8 class (regular 20hr/week) this semester. The class is
basically composed of mainly Koreans (possibly 13-14), two Japanese,
two Kazakhstanis and …I. So, it has been very interesting. I have
even thought of learning Korean, but didn't get around to it! The
positive thing is that I have to speak Chinese 99% of the time. I was
a bit concerned previously about the size of the class, but as the
semester progresses, so did the number of students who turned up to
class. Today we only had six! Don't take that as a norm though,
because I think other classes have better attendance, I would say
depending on the motivation of the students, or may be we are all
really tired by this time (either from studying, or partying!).

I find the teaching style a bit different from my last intensive
course, but nevertheless, I still enjoyed all my classes, even the
listening class was interesting.

The zonghe (comprehension class) took up most of the time (12 hours/
week). This time we had a young male teacher. The class turned out to
be a lot of fun and we often chat to and joke with the teacher both
during the class and during the break. I think this really helped to
improve our oral Chinese.

For the oral class (4 hours per week), we have an older teacher. She
is so lovely! We all love her! The only thing about the kouyu class is
that there is so much grammar in each lesson I hardly can remember it
all. Ok, I need to go back and revise.

For Listening (4 hours per week), we have a young female teacher. I
find her really good. She has a way of explaining new words and
grammar in a way that the meaning can be understood easily.

So, it's been interesting, very different from my A7 Intensive class
last year, where we only had 12 students (from 7 different countries)
in the class, and most were really studious, turning up to class
everyday. May be the difference is that if people sign up for the
intensive course, they are probably more studious to start off with.